OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma prepared to execute a man Thursday as it waited for Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt to decide whether to spare the death row inmate’s life and grant a rare Petition for clemency by the State Parole Board.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection for his role in the shooting death of a grocery store owner during a robbery in 1992.

In six years as governor, Stitt has granted pardons only once and rejected recommendations from the state’s Board of Pardons and Parole in three other cases. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Stitt said the governor had met with prosecutors and Littlejohn’s lawyers but had not made a decision.

The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Littlejohn would be the 14th person executed in Oklahoma during Stitt’s tenure.

Another execution was scheduled for later Thursday in Alabamaand if both are carried out, this would be the first time in decades that five sentenced to death were executed in the USA within a week.

In Oklahoma, an appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a last-minute lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution. A similar appeal filed in federal court was also rejected on Thursday.

Littlejohn would be the third Oklahoma inmate to be executed this year. He was 20 when he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City in June 1992, according to prosecutors. The store’s owner, Kenneth Meers, 31, was killed.

During video testimony before the Board of Pardons and Parole last month, Littlejohn apologized to Meers’ family but denied firing the fatal shot. Littlejohn’s lawyers pointed out that the same prosecutor had prosecuted Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials using a nearly identical theory, even though there was only one shooter and one bullet that killed Meers.

However, prosecutors told the panel that two teenage store employees who witnessed the robbery both testified that Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the fatal shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Littlejohn’s lawyers also argued that homicides resulting from robberies are rarely punishable by death and that prosecutors today would not seek the maximum sentence.

“It is obvious that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if his trial had taken place in 2024 or even in 2004,” attorney Caitlin Hoeberlein told the panel.

Littlejohn was tried by Bob Macy, a former Oklahoma County district attorney known for his passionate pursuit of the death penalty, who obtained 54 death sentences during his more than 20 years in office.

The panel’s 3-2 recommendation gave Stitt the opportunity to commute Littlejohn’s sentence to life without parole. The governor appointed three members of the panel.

In 2021, Stitt granted clemency for Julius Jones, commute his sentence to life without parole, just hours before Jones was due to receive a lethal injection. He rejected the panel’s recommendations for clemency for Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington And Phillip Hancockwho were all executed.

Including the executions in Oklahoma and Alabama, there would be a total of 1,600 executions nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.